- News media coverage mainly focuses on problems and conflicts, resulting in unintended negative consequences for democracy and journalism itself. Constructive journalism aims to address these issues by emphasizing solution-oriented reporting. However, research on its effects remains inconsistent, mainly due to vague definitions of constructive journalism and a lack of theoretical foundation. This paper first proposes a content-centered definition of constructive journalism, suggesting three dimensions: balance, matter-of-factness, and focus on solutions. Using a series of established theories, we then present a theoretical framework that models the impacts of the content dimensions in a chain of effects from emotions to cognitive and conative variables. Our approach offers a systematic basis for future research by enabling experimental analysis of operationalizable and empirically separable content dimensions and by integrating research on constructive journalism into a variety ofNews media coverage mainly focuses on problems and conflicts, resulting in unintended negative consequences for democracy and journalism itself. Constructive journalism aims to address these issues by emphasizing solution-oriented reporting. However, research on its effects remains inconsistent, mainly due to vague definitions of constructive journalism and a lack of theoretical foundation. This paper first proposes a content-centered definition of constructive journalism, suggesting three dimensions: balance, matter-of-factness, and focus on solutions. Using a series of established theories, we then present a theoretical framework that models the impacts of the content dimensions in a chain of effects from emotions to cognitive and conative variables. Our approach offers a systematic basis for future research by enabling experimental analysis of operationalizable and empirically separable content dimensions and by integrating research on constructive journalism into a variety of established media effect theories. Thus, we meet the demand for a stronger theoretical focus and aim to clarify constructive journalism’s impact on audiences.…

